Raw unshelled peanuts are picked by harvesters from peanut crop fields. Together with the peanuts, the harvesters also pick up debris such as cans, sticks, branches, weeds and the like. Sometimes shovel or other large tool is found in the batch of raw peanuts hauled by a track to a peanut warehouse. Such debris must be removed or "cleaned" from the batch of peanuts before product processing on the peanuts may occur.
One known peanut cleaner/sorter machine uses spaced apart rotating belts as screens to clean debris from a batch of peanuts. The cleaner/sorter has a frame assembled from tubes. Four tubes connect together with upper and lower horizontal side tubes to form a substantially rectangular frame. Four rotatable shafts mount in spaced relation on the upper side tubes transverse to the longitudinal axis of the cleaner/sorter. The two inside shafts mount vertically higher than the outside shafts. Two rotatable shafts mount to the lower side tubes transverse to the longitudinal axis. A plurality of endless spaced apart belts loop over the shafts with a gap between adjacent belts. One of the shafts mounted to the lower side tube connects to an adjustor which translates the shaft with respect to the longitudinal axis of the cleaner/sorter. Moving the adjustable shaft away from the longitudinal midpoint tightens the belts around the shafts.
A motor attached to the outside of the cleaner/sorter frame connects to one of the shafts. The motor turns the shaft which causes the belts to rotate.
An open planar feeding unit mounts above the surface defined by the spaced apart belts. The feeder slopes because one end is positioned higher than the other end. A motor mounted on the feeder turns an offset cam. The motor and offset cam cause the feeder unit to shake. Peanuts poured in the feeding unit thus are shaken and caused to slide off the feeder unit onto the rotating belts.
The rotating belts spread out the pile of peanuts and move the peanuts towards the other end of the cleaner/sorter. Peanuts and debris smaller than the gap between the belts fall through and into a hopper. Larger debris travels on the top surface of the belts and falls off the cleaner/sorter when the belts wrap over the end shaft from a horizontal position to a downward position towards the lower drive shaft. The collected peanuts and debris funnel from the hopper through a spout to other peanut processing machines for further debris removal, cleaning, and product processing.
This machine has drawbacks which limit its capacity and usefulness for cleaning and sorting of peanuts. Particularly, peanuts and debris travelling on the belts may ride on the top of a moving belt, but to be sorted, the peanuts and debris must fall into the longitudinal gaps between adjacent belts. Metal fingers extend downwardly towards the surface of the belts from a bar transverse to the longitudinal axis. The fingers help push peanuts and debris into the gaps between the belts, but the fingers are not completely effective and some peanuts travel across the machine riding on top of a belt.
Further, the machine may be set to separate larger peanuts from standard size peanuts, but the large debris, such as sticks, cans, and weeds, collect with the large peanuts at the end of the sort bed. Subsequent processing must then clean not only the debris which is about the size of the peanuts, but must also process again the large debris to clean it from the peanuts.
Peanuts collect in a hopper and pass through a funnel on one side of the machine. It is desirable to position the funnel adjacent the next processing machine. One funnel, however, causes problems with locating the machine. Equipment changes in the warehouse or moving the machine to another farm with different equipment may cause the outlet funnel to be blocked or make it otherwise impractical to handle peanuts coming from the funnel.